


Beside the woeful tide of Acheron

by GreenSpine (Archon)



Category: Divine Comedy - Dante
Genre: Gen, POV Minor Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:02:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archon/pseuds/GreenSpine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charon's instructions to his passengers never vary and are never heeded.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beside the woeful tide of Acheron

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merry_stew](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merry_stew/gifts).



The multitude has moved on, past knowledge or concern, leaving no trace behind to mark its passage.

Charon's vessel is sealed in Darkness, a gift from his father, and with the blessings of his mother Night he is kept well hidden from Chronos' morbid gaze. He has no need to guide the boat back across the Acheron's tidal waters. He has already done so; he is doing so; he will do so.

Souls are waiting, each in its own time and by its own customs. A few bring coins, a token of respect for his office. Most bring only their own purity or debasement. Of these, many are blind, oblivious, believing that they have been exempted from the natural laws defining this journey, though they are there nonetheless.

Deftly navigating the tides and undercurrents of time, he avoids the variations, violations, of this space.

The shore is always crowded. Charon's instructions to his passengers never vary and are never heeded.

The living too often end up here, transported by his brother Morpheus through their own violent fear. These he plucks out and sends back to wait their rightful turn. They will awaken, shiver, and forget.

But Chaos demands exceptions. Each reverberates through all of the worlds, great cosmic earthquakes and hurricanes and tidal waves, upending one order and replacing it with something new. Charon sails in the eye of these storms, aware but untouched.

These living souls are the stars by which he navigates, fixed points in unending darkness.

One such stands waiting, trembling on the edge of the river as though sensing the abyss lurking beneath the murky waters. His faith is young and strong, violent. The first, fragile emissary of a new age can perceive only what he will, though he has the power to shape his world.

The living soul does not stand alone. One of the dead hovers close by, chained to him by bonds of love. For the guide, this passage is perilous. The tidal pull of an era will alter what should have been eternal, and he will be ripped from his place to become a child of the new world.

Charon tries to send them back, a formality; order demands that change must be both inevitable and opposed.

The illusion of matter trembles with the force of the guide's swift refusal. Everything that is normally still is set into motion. The expectations of a single, living soul become reality, quickly engineered from thought into being. If the construct is too weak, the man's faith too insubstantial, Charon's vessel will fail to hold its passengers, and all will tumble endlessly into the infinite void.

In that moment is every form Charon has ever been and every form he ever will be: he is a machine, and a woman with a rope around her neck, and a man with the head of a jackal, and an owl, and a skeleton. He is all and none of these.

However, the living soul sees him as a man, ancient and terrifying, and his belief is strong enough to weave the smallest particles of matter together and bind them.

A great wind begins to swirl around them, building ever greater, altering the nature of everything in its path. Before Charon, the earth continues to rumble and shake, disquieting the souls awaiting their journey. Behind him, the waters of the Acheron shiver, the smooth dull surface reflecting the dim red glow in broken fractal patterns.

The world below becomes as the world above: a new place, a new time.

Yet the storm remains outside Charon, never touching. Nothing has changed in the deeper fundament upon which he serves his purpose.

He calls out to the souls who are meant to travel, fixing each with a look which helps to becalm them, herding the ones who linger into his boat. One by one they climb in, beings of pure energy, each a masterpiece of darkness and light. No matter how many enter, there is always room for one more, until the last finds its place.

His charges settled, Charon turns to the living and gestures. It is time for this traveler to begin his journey. Dark, human eyes stare into his, and he knows the man's name is Dante, knows that he is a singularity amongst unique souls.

Dante sees him as well, in a way his mortal thoughts cannot encompass. Charon feels the understanding rip through Dante's psyche, exploding in a brilliance of vermillion, lightning tearing through and illuminating what is kept hidden from living thought. He sees the truth of what Charon is, even as his mortal mind folds in upon itself so that he will not remember. His eyes close and he stumbles, until his guide catches his arm and leads, one faltering step at a time, to where Charon's boat is waiting.

The passengers crowd together at one end, most with eyes downcast as though aware of the nakedness of their souls, missing the bodies they have left behind. Dante stares back at them without pity or compassion. He does not recognize the truth of his own future in their plight, trusting instead that his God and a woman he barely knew will intercede upon his death.

He is wrong, Charon knows. As Dante steps into the boat, Charon watches him in another time, the echo of this reality but without the weight of his flesh. He is one of the blind, one who makes the death-journey unaware. Charon is neither surprised nor offended by his passenger's lack of recognition or gratitude; he serves as his nature commands, inexorably and without malice or favor.

The vessel sinks slightly beneath Dante's weight, boards groaning and creaking in protest at the unusual load, at being forced against their nature to exist so solidly and to bear mass.

They sail a route that is both new and preordained. Neither swell nor wave disturbs the ship, which glides through the water without movement. Dante's gaze remains fixed ahead, toward the horrors his mind has made.

It is the guide who, in his wisdom, looks back at the shore with regret.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Canto III of _The Divine Comedy_. (Not that rivers generally have tides.) Enormous thanks to T. for her help and thoughtful comments!


End file.
